Once an item is placed in a container and the container is closed, it is difficult to confirm that the item is indeed in the container, especially in a busy packaging station or where multiple components are shipped or stored. Likewise, once an item is packed it can be difficult to identify the precise item, among many possible items, contained therein. Where multiple components are involved, both the packagers and the recipients may not locate all components: not all components may be included in the container or they may not all be successfully retrieved from the container by the recipient. Employees can make mistakes as can customers. Likewise, employees and customers may fraudulently claim that no item was present in a container when shipped or received.
Mistakes in packaging and shipping or storage are ever-more likely with the recent increase in the market for goods shipped via orders placed on the global computer network by smaller companies or individuals, or by larger companies operating under just-in-time inventory management strategies. There are lately more and smaller components and they are being shipped in smaller quantities to more diverse and anonymous buyers. Thus, both the likelihood and expense of fraud or accident has increased. Further, the use of unskilled labor can increase the likelihood of accident, miscommunication and fraud during assembly and packaging. The outsourcing of small-component fabrication or assembly plants across nations and cultures only increases this risk.
Further, the highly competitive nature of the computer network based economy with ever-more consumer choice and savvy, coupled with the commoditization of many previously single-source premium products, has caused companies to seek market differentiators and to improve customer relations. The experience of opening a container from a vendor, the so-called “out-of-box experience,” has become a subject of much study among marketers hoping to gain a degree of competitive advantage. An attractive and functional package that is easy to open and provides for quick retrieval of the contents, will deliver a positive experience and tend to enhance a customer's perceptions about a vendor. If properly designed in terms of its ease-of-use and visual presentation, such packaging could also encourage the recipient to follow a pattern or step-by-step approach to opening a container and retrieving an item, which approach may be choreographed by a marketing or engineering department to achieve a desired end.
Packaging is a time-consuming step in the chain of events between ordering and shipping. It would be advantageous to have items packaged swiftly and accurately, and even to have them prepackaged for immediate shipping. Further, once packaged, it would be advantageous to easily inventory items that are warehoused in pre-packed configurations for immediate delivery.
It would also be advantageous for any improved packaging enhancing device to be unobtrusive so as not to disrupt the normal workflow, non-bulky so that it could be pre-applied or incorporated into to the containers, such as to disassembled boxes stacked flat on a pallet.
The use of padding or other packaging material to protect fragile items can also cause the item to be obscured from view. Not only is it difficult to identify the item once covered in this material, it is often impossible to determine whether the item continues to reside in the proper location within this material such that it is protected. Items often drift to the bottom or side of a container during handling or shipping. Thus, it would be advantageous to have a means of quickly confirming that an item exists within the packaging material and to have a means of maintaining the item in the proper location within the obscuring packaging material, both in terms of its depth in the packaging material and its position between the walls of the container.
When several items are packaged together, or when a catalog, document, or promotional item is included in the container, a recipient may assume that the first item they retrieve is the only item in the container; he may discard the other items unknowingly along with the protective, but obscuring, packaging material. If confronted with a mass of light or difficult-to-control packaging material, such as foam peanuts, shredded paper, air bags, or the like, the recipient may be discouraged from diligently searching through the container to confirm that all items have been successfully retrieved. Thus, it would be advantageous to provide a means for readily identifying the location, type, and number of items within a container.
In the case where a customer claims that an item was absent in a container, the vendor is confronted with several options and must choose among the following responses: A. “The item must have been in the container we shipped to you, since we don't make shipping or packaging mistakes,” B. “You made a mistake; you probably threw it out.” C. “We don't believe you, you are being dishonest,” and D. “We are sorry, we will send out a replacement immediately.” Clearly, the latter is, while expensive, the most likely response if customer satisfaction is to be ensured.
For these and other reasons, there is an immediate and long-felt need for a packaging device that allows facile identification of items in a container, whether open or closed; which maintains items in their proper location in the container and among protective packaging material; which positively enhances the recipient's experience of opening the container and retrieving the item(s); which dissuades fraud on the part of employees and customers; which allows rapid visual or mechanical/electronic confirmation and inventory of prepackaged items; which can be manufactured and applied inexpensively and quickly; which can guide the process of item retrieval from the container; which is unobtrusive and thin enough to be attached to containers or incorporated into the container for rapid deployment; and which is sufficiently versatile to allow attachment to a variety of containers and items.